Project VIBRANT: Valorisation of Industrial side-streams for Bioproduction of Rare and vAluable Natural Terpenoids (Carotenoids)

Project partners: Royal Holloway University of London & AlgaeCytes

Project focus area: Waste recycling 

Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) is an omega-3 fatty acid, which offers numerous health benefits when dietary acquired. These health benefits include reducing inflammation, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia.

Algae have proven to be an excellent natural source of EPA. The Small Medium Enterprise (SME), AlgaeCytes has developed a sustainable production process for this valuable compound from Algae. A side-stream generated during this process contains carotenoids, particularly beta-carotene, and other terpenoids. The VIBRANT project aims to analyse the potential valorisation of the AlgaeCytes side-stream. This will be achieved by:

1. The use metabolite profiling to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the AlgaeCytes side-stream to identify potential metabolites and bioactives of value.
2. Deploying preparative High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) to selectively enrich beta-carotene and other carotenoids from the side-stream.
3. Performing biocatalysis for carotenoid transformation with recombinant engineered enzymes.
4. Performing economic and market evaluation of the products.

The collaboration proposed will leverage the expertise of Royal Holloway University of London in carotenoid analysis and the capabilities of their enterprise, NATCOM, in producing reference standards for chemical distributors. AlgaeCytes will provide the feedstock in-kind and Waters Limited, will provide in-kind access to their preparative purification platforms for evaluation. This approach is synergistic to the UK’s remit on Engineering Biology, Circular Bioeconomy and Net Zero ambitions.

For more information

For more information on this project, contact us, or view all Engineering Biology SPARK Award winners.

This project funding is part of the Engineering Biology Innovation Network, led by Innovate UK Business Connect in collaboration with Innovate UK and UKRI’s Technology Mission Fund. The network’s goal is to progress innovations, create a commercially focused community and foster new consortia to advance innovations towards commercial applications.